"We're no pushovers!"
Yang Yang's forceful declaration at the Grimaldi Forum quickly spread around the world.
Everyone sympathized with his plight, because it really was a miserable one.
Of the eight groups in this season's Champions League, Group B was by far the most brutal. It brought together Bayern Munich, Tottenham Hotspur, Ajax, and Inter Milan, with Ajax the weakest of the four.
Worse still, the fixture list released afterward revealed that Ajax would open their campaign away at the Allianz Arena against Bayern Munich. That undoubtedly made things even harder for them.
The Chinese had an old saying: a good beginning was half the battle.
But as things stood, Yang Yang's start to his coaching career could hardly have been more miserable.
Coaching a team of pushovers was bad enough. After battling through every obstacle to reach the Champions League group stage and achieve a breakthrough, they had landed in a terrifying group of death the likes of which appeared only once every few years. Could they have been any unluckier?
As soon as the draw came out, analysts unanimously declared that Ajax had virtually no hope of advancing.
"Yang Yang's debut season as a coach will end in the Champions League group stage, and there's a very strong chance they'll finish bottom."
In the title odds offered by William Hill and the other two major bookmakers, Ajax were also near the bottom. Among the few teams worse off were Switzerland's Young Boys of Bern, who had been drawn alongside Juventus and Manchester United and likewise had virtually no hope of advancing.
Twenty-seventh in the odds out of thirty-two teams—the misery of Ajax's situation was plain to see.
And that was with Yang Yang. Without him, everyone would probably have written Ajax off before a ball had even been